I think very few people appreciate how difficult and stressful their job is.
Most people assume it's as simple as 'answer the phone, book the appointment'.
Most of the patients ringing in will already be feeling frustrated at having to wait in a queue and often having to make several attempts to contact the surgery for what might seem like a fairly straightforward request. The receptionists are constantly having to apologise for a situation that isn't their fault and trying to manage patient's expectations whilst knowing that often they won't be able to provide a satisfactory resolution eg they either tell the patient that they can't have an appointment that day or they have to explain to an irate clinician why they agreed to give a patient an emergency slot for something that clearly wasn't an emergency.
They have to remember all the various protocols and services and which clinical staff can deal with particular problems, have to make decisions about how urgent things are without having clinical training, are subjected to constant abuse and get paid less than if they worked on a supermarket till.
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2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 26 May 2023, 7:35,
Reply)
I really should have reported the two I encountered some years back.
As a patient in the waiting room, they were loudly discussing patient medical details, with names.
(, Fri 26 May 2023, 15:19, Reply)
I had some dentist in Pennsylvania send me a patient's entire medical history to my gmail the other day
Not just the teeth, what sort of cancer he's got, his bowel problems the lot
(, Fri 26 May 2023, 16:13, Reply)